The man, who is critically ill with breathing problems, has been
isolated in a Manchester hospital while he receives treatment for
"novel coronavirus".
The man is being treated in the intensive care unit at Wythenshawe
Hospital.

One man was flown to London from Qatar last year for specialist
treatment. Sky News understands he is still severely ill.

The above comments
describe the current
novel coronavirus case in England, who had traveled to the Middle
East and Pakistan, as well as the earlier
case from Qatar who was infected in September but remains
hospitalized. In addition to the above two cases, there have been
eight additional confirmed cases with outcomes. Five of the eight
have died, while there other three were hospitalized for several weeks
and required mechanical ventilation.

Thus, all 10 confirmed cases
have been severe, raising concerns that the current protocols have a
limited abilty to detect milder cases. The two fatal cases from Jordan
were part of a larger cluster. The size of the cluster and
clinical presentations similar to SARS-CoV cases from 2002 raised
considerable concerns. Samples were sent to France and Egypt
(NARU-3) for analysis, and initial testing for SARS was negative.
However, new PCR probes based on the sequence from the novel
betecornavirus from the above Qatar case as well as an earlier case
from Saudi Arabia allowed for detection of the virus in the two fatal
cases from Jordan.

However, the symptomatic
contacts of the two fatal cases were not confirmed, raising serious
sensitivity issues with the testing. Similarly, symptomatic
contacts of the Qatar case also tested
negative.

Most of the confirmed cases
developed renal failure as did the more severe SARS-CoV cases (about
5% and most with renal
failure died), suggesting that there are many more milder
betacoronavirus cases than the 10 confirmed severe cases.

The discovery of H1N1pdm09 as
a co-infection of the most recent case raises serious concerns that
such co-infections would be diagnosed as H1N1pdm09 cases, especially in
the Middle East and eastern Europe, where H1N1pdm09 is dominant.
Co-infection with H1N1pdm09 would allow for easier transmission and
harder detection, raising concerns that the novel betacornavirus is
widespread, but undetected in milder cases, which are not tested for
betacornavirus, or more severe cases because H1N1pdm09 is detected and
these cases are therefore not tested for betacornavirus because they
are influenza A positive.